Three billion, that’s the magic number
Yes it is, it’s the magic number:
The costs of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq this year are likely to almost double to £3.3bn, a committee of MPs has warned.
Now that’s a lot of money. Suddenly you see why Mozambique and Bosnia are going to have to live with stray landmines and loose machine guns for a while longer.
Of course, it would be nice to know just where all this money is going. Nice, yes. Necessary? What do you think?
While the committee recommended that the House of Commons should accept the estimates, it said the Ministry of Defence needed to provide more information on how the additional cash was being spent.
No doubt the government can’t release this information for reasons of security. The cabinet’s job security. The thing is, with this shower you can’t be sure whether they’re covering up or they genuinely have no idea. The paperwork could have been given to David Miliband to crayon on. Or recycled to meet some Whitehall target or other.
Whatever the reason, it’s time to get your magic wallet out again.
Posted on March 10th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
| See also • Galloway’s Humour • Guardian: Peer was paid to introduce lobbyist to minister • All that glisters |
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Oh, oh,oh it’s the cost of oil…
According to Joseph Stiglitz, the cost for the USA is rather larger… on the order of US$3 trillion so far, that being a conservative estimate. Count the zeroes… 3,000,000,000,000
Well, that’s because the USofA is, like, 1,000 times so much cooler than the UK, and this country seems hell-bent on emulating every stupid fucking idea the Americans ever came up with, invading Iraq and Afghanistan being only the latest: H-bombs. Trident submarines. An elected upper House. Reality TV and requiring public television (the BBC) to ‘compete’ with the commercial channels. Selling off our industry to become a service economy. McDonald’s, Dominos, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Asda (WalMart), 4×4s, shopping malls. A Pledge of Allegiance and an Armed Forces Day; Flag Day will be next, and I’m sure May Day will become Labour Day and move to September, lest it sound too communist. Xenophobic anti-immigrant hysteria. Pedophile hysteria. Welfare ‘reform’. School ‘choice’. Creationism. Anti-abortionism. People dialling 911 instead of 999 because that’s what they’ve seen in American shows and films.
Gah.
Could everyone who wants this country to become the 51st State just go move to Montana or something, and leave the rest of us alone?
An elected upper House
Why is this “stupid”?
Because, without any substantive change in the way ‘democratic’ elections are held, the Lords will wind up being composed precisely of the same sort of rubbish we now have in Commons, instead of a deliberative, somewhat dull, debating society, (ideally) composed of people who actually give a rat’s ass about the long-term fate of the nation as opposed to their own re-election and their party’s machinations.
I realise that that’s not exactly the way it is, but if all we do is trade the House of Lords for the US Senate, I don’t consider that a win by any stretch.
I keep hearing people throw the idea of republicanism and elected bodies as the solution to everything, but I don’t buy it. It’s not at all clear to me that a body ‘elected’ using the same utterly corrupt and meaningless mechanisms we use now is any better than one composed of hereditary peers who got their because their ancestors were on the right side when the King was doling out territory.
@ Dave Cole. Amazing stuff from Stiglits and a large of the cash seems to have loaned by China and India. An interesting debt for the US to have.
[...] The cost of ‘operations’ in Afghanistan and Iraq could be as high as £3.3bn this year according to the Commons Defence Committee. Once again the British taxpayer acquiesces to funding ongoing misery [...]